Bush drops McCain the warmonger in it

In these very bad weeks for Republican John McCain's hopes for victory in November, the most cruel blow of all is surely that President George Bush has evidently decided to let McCain sink, without even pretending to toss a life-belt to his fellow Republican.
 
Two mean-spirited men by nature, Bush and McCain have never liked each other much and this natural animosity was fanned by the vicious nomination fights of 2000, when Bush routed McCain with salvoes of slurs, including one about a black 'love child' disfiguring the senator's escutcheon.
 
Both are now in poor political shape, with contradictory strategies for rehabbing their fortunes.
 
The president is saddled with an approval rating bumping along in the 20s. Each day he is served another platter of contemptuous stories about 'the worst presidency of modern times', the lack of any enduring 'legacy', the approaching Democratic landslide that will put the Republicans in the wilderness for at least a decade.
 
For his part, McCain trails Barack Obama by anywhere from four to nine points. Often he seems a forgotten candidate. Only one reporter turned out to cover his arrival at an airport in New Hampshire last week. He flails wildly, whining that it's Obama's fault that the price of oil is bankrupting Americans.
 
Aside from the race card, McCain's last best hope has always been a steady pounding of the war drum against Iran. Then he could strut about on the poop deck as a man seasoned in the grim business of putting Americans in harm's way, in contrast to his wimpish opponent.
 
And indeed all through the first half of this year the drum rolls were unceasing. But then, in the last 10 days, to McCain's mortification, they stopped. Suddenly the air is fragrant with talk of a possible new dawn in relations between the US and Iran. Bush even sent a senior State Department official, William Burns, to join Washington's allies at a negotiating table with Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator (albeit to keep his own mouth shut).
 
In step with this shocking demonstration of sanity, the White House made no serious attempt to up-end Obama's trip to Iraq or excessively ridicule the harmonies from the Democratic candidate and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on schedules for US withdrawal. If it had so desired, the White House could easily have made Obama's trip extremely uncomfortable. All it would have taken was something such as a provocative overflight of Tehran, with subsequent flexing of muscles.
 
As final testimony to the huge disaster for the McCain campaign of Obama's trip to Iraq, the floundering Republican candidate managed to shoehorn himself into talk about a rate of withdrawal from Iraq a good deal brisker than the 100 years of occupation he was talking about in the spring, or even the 2013 deadline he subsequently settled on.
 
The fact is that the peace lobby in Washington has scored another victory over the war party, just as it did with the joint assessment of the intelligence services last year that war on Iran was a rotten idea. This time, wiser heads than Dick Cheney's have acknowledged the fact that the price rises for fuel are savaging an already weak economy and tottering credit system. War on Iran would be the coup de grace.
 
At the Republican convention in Minneapolis at the start of September, Bush is being given the first day. Of course, he could use it as a trumpet blast, draping the warrior's mantle around McCain's seasoned shoulders. But it's more likely now that Bush will announce yet again, 'Mission Accomplished'. What does that leave McCain with, against the candidate of hope and change? ·